A Start-Up’s Guide To Social Media Marketing

As an entrepreneur, guiding your start-up company to success is not an easy task. Social media is becoming an essential tool in the small business marketer’s toolbox, but like any tool it has its advantages and disadvantages.

Having a knowledge of social media marketing basics can help new start-ups use these channels to improve the customer experience, employee experience, and the bottom line.

Listening – once you determine your target audience, read their online content and join conversations to find out what’s important to them. This will help you create your own content that will inspire conversations.

Focus – don’t be a jack-of-all trades. Instead, develop a focused social media marketing strategy and content that builds up your organization’s brand.

Quality – it’s more important to have quality conversations in a smaller social network than to have a larger social network that isn’t engaged.

Compounding – if you create quality content and work on building a quality social network, those network contacts will share it among their own networks and increase your audience reach.

Influence – find and develop relationships with online influencers who are interested in your products, services, and business. In turn, they may share your valuable content with their own social networks, increasing your audience reach.

Acknowledgement – just as you’d acknowledge someone on a phone call, it’s equally essential to respond to every social media contact who reaches out to you.

Accessibility – be available to engage in conversation with your social media contacts. If you disappear after publishing content, your followers will disappear too.

Reciprocity – remember to share content published by others…you are an influencer too. You can’t expect your networks to share your content if you don’t share theirs.

Now that the fundamentals have been observed, the next step is to create your social media marketing strategy. So where to start? Infographic creator Column Five created the infographic below as a guide for new entrepreneurs figuring out their social media strategy:

Just remember that every organization has a unique social media marketing plan, so find what works and enjoy the results.

A case study

Blendtec, manufacturer of blenders, mixers, and mills, has a very unique social media marketing success story based entirely around it’s use of YouTube videos and their CEO’s love of tinkering.

It was common practice for CEO Tom Dickson to test the blenders they manufactured by blending random items, like marbles and wood. When George Wright, Blendtec’s first marketing director, witnessed Tom during one of these sessions, he knew they’d just hit gold for their first social marketing campaign.

In 2006, Blendtec made its grand entrance on the social media stage when they started recording Tom’s blending tests using increasingly obscure items. They were posted on YouTube and the viral “Will it blend?” video series and YouTube page was born.

Blendtec’s original goal for the “Will it blend?” video series was increased awareness for their blender products.

A social media marketing strategy isn’t one-size-fits-all. Create a customized strategy that works for your organization and the goals you’ve set.

It’s important for organizations to have a face. Creating a social media marketing strategy that is genuine and creative will help achieve that.

Don’t try to pull out all the stops right from the get-go. Start basic and build up you social media marketing strategy one step at a time.

Executing a social media marketing strategy doesn’t have to be expensive. Blendtec demonstrated this, creating a viral video series by purchasing a white lab coat and an item to destroy for each video.